By: JAKE TIGER
Capital News Service
The Maryland Supreme Court ruled Sept. 3 to allow a redistricting question on November’s midterm ballots, overturning two lower-court rulings and setting up a vote that could allow Democrats to redraw the boundaries of Maryland’s congressional map.
As other states traded blows in a nationwide redistricting battle, Maryland failed to land a significant strike in time for the midterm election. But not for lack of trying.
Even as Gov. Wes Moore threw his political weight behind the move, the state did not pass a redrawn congressional map. The obstacle was a clause deep in the state constitution that prevents lawmakers from drawing districts that cross natural boundaries, like the Chesapeake Bay.
In a press conference on Sept. 17, Moore said, “I think the people of Maryland have seen now for the past year, the cruel and creative ways that [the Trump administration] will try to manipulate elections, and they know they’re not done.”
Now, after multiple lawsuits and a Supreme Court win, Marylanders will instead vote this November on Question 3 — a constitutional amendment that would loosen redistricting requirements. The amendment, if passed, would not affect the 2026 midterm, but it would open the door for a redrawn map that could flip Maryland’s sole Republican House seat.
Democrats eye the Eastern Shore
The new map proposed by Democrats would aim to break up the historically red Eastern Shore, which U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., has held since 2011, by splitting it into two districts that each poke into Maryland’s blue, densely populated center. The new 1st District, for example, encompasses the lower half of the Eastern Shore while also following the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into Anne Arundel County and Howard County.
The Maryland Constitution currently requires congressional maps to be drawn with regard for “natural boundaries and … political subdivisions.” The amendment would do away with this requirement by untying federal redistricting from the state constitution.
Harris, whose legislative post is at the center of Maryland’s redistricting battle, told WBAL-TV 11, “I think the judges got it wrong. … I think that the majority of Marylanders do not agree with hyper-partisan gerrymandering and I think they’re going to reject the amendment.”
‘The rules have changed’
Question 3 encountered its share of legal hurdles before its eventual Supreme Court victory, being hit with multiple lawsuits from Republican officials that resulted in lower courts blocking the proposed amendment.
Higher- and lower-court judges agreed Question 3’s original wording was complex and misleading, but the Supreme Court allowed a revised version of the question to make it to ballots.
Lawmakers tried to pass a new map earlier in the year, but Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, never brought a redistricting bill to the floor, believing the map’s boundaries were unconstitutional.
Ferguson was, however, open to a constitutional amendment. “The rules have changed,” Ferguson said in a statement in May. “The [U.S.] Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, and Southern legislatures are already using that ruling to wipe out minority districts. Maryland must respond as the ground shifts under us.”
Moore called a special session from Aug. 3 to Aug. 5 that allowed lawmakers to get Question 3 over the line more than a month after the July 1 deadline for ballot questions. Republicans quickly sued, and circuit court judges in Anne Arundel County and Dorchester County eventually blocked the question, saying the wording was misleading and the legislative process behind it violated due process requirements.
Both rulings were appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court, where a split group of judges cleared the way for a revised version of Question 3, while echoing the concerns of lower courts. Chief Justice Matthew Fader said the original wording was misleading and ordered that the purpose paragraph of the redistricting bill be used as a substitute.
The Maryland Supreme Court’s decision also came at the last minute with midterm ballots needing to be finalized by the end of that day. In a statement on Sept. 3, Moore called the decision a “massive victory” for Marylanders. Ferguson and other Democrats issued similar remarks.
Thus far, Republicans have come out ahead in the mid-cycle redistricting race with Texas and Florida enacting new maps that could each turn a handful of seats red. Maryland’s proposed map would counteract the efforts of smaller Southern states, like North Carolina and Tennessee, which each redrew districts in hopes of grabbing an extra GOP seat.
Maryland Republicans have argued that breaking up the state’s last red district would disenfranchise Republican voters. In an email exchange with CNS, Nicole Beus Harris, the Maryland GOP chairwoman and Andy Harris’s wife, said the new map would eliminate “political opposition and rural representation,” allowing for the “most extreme gerrymandered map in the nation.”
Del. N. Scott Phillips, D-Baltimore County, who chairs Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus, defended Maryland Democrats’ redistricting efforts in an interview with CNS, saying it empowered Black voters while acknowledging the move’s partisan nature. “Congress has said we can be as partisan as we would like to be, and not that that’s the desire, but I think we’re in a place where we have to be on the offensive.”
Ashna Balroop, Cat Murphy and Charlotte Ormond contributed reporting.
